


B1N4RY

by Misaya



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Android Levi, Comedy, Eventual Levi/Erwin Smith, Falling In Love, Farmboy Turned Lawyer erwin Smith, Happy Ending, Inspired By Tumblr, Light Angst, Light-Hearted, M/M, dysfunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2016-01-18
Packaged: 2018-04-21 11:18:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4827134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His new android, a SONY Housekeeper 228 model, isn't acting as expected, and though the instruction manual is a whopping 172 pages, Erwin can't seem to figure out why his android is acting so...human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (눈▽눈)ﾉ

Erwin had saved the biggest box for last, as he’d been prone to do since childhood. It was a long, flat, rectangular package all done up in leftover wrapping paper from Christmas, reindeers with glowing noses and fat jolly Santas dancing across the bright green, glossy paper that tore apart in long, neat strips under Erwin’s eager fingers. It was a graduation present from his parents, his well-meaning, kind-hearted, corn-fed parents, who had absolutely no idea why their only beloved son wanted to transplant himself directly to a far off land (see: San Francisco) with new ideas and new people and new foods (see: the concept of agnosticism, baristas with pierced tongues and black lipstick on every corner coffee shop, and garlic noodles and Dungeness crab). Completely foreign concepts to these two well-meaning, big blonde people who’d never stepped a toe out of the Midwest in their lives and whose only daily concerns were how the corn was doing (Papa Smith) and how many doilies they could crochet for the church fundraiser (Mama Smith).

The resulting box gleamed back at him in a glossy shade of pearly white. SONY Housekeeper 228, the box proclaimed in large grey letters, just this side of upraised as Erwin ran a finger along them, marveling at the texture.

“Oh, goodness,” he gasped, all but blubbering at the – frankly – exorbitant gift his parents had given him. “This is far too much.” He had seen commercials for the housekeeping android model in question on their bubble-butt TV in the living room, standing half-hunched over the screen, one hand on the dial and the other on the antenna his father had stuck on top, stabilized with a crumpled cone of tin foil, to keep the signal from being disrupted. The commercials had always been rather flashy, airing right in the intervals between the Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune segments that Erwin watched, rather religiously, every night on the dot at seven. The robot had been, according to the ever-truthful advertisements, one of those more advanced models that replicated human speech in which it communicated with its owners about their cleaning preferences. It had been proclaimed as the most lifelike android of its class at one of those technology shows or another somewhere in Silicon Valley.

The jingle for the commercial played in Erwin’s head even now, a series of arpeggios in little mechanical chimes that reminded him rather fondly of the time his parents had taken him to Disneyland for his thirteenth birthday. It had been their first, and only, trip out of Nebraska. He had been infatuated with “It’s a Small World,” the little mechanized dolls from different countries and cultures all dancing and singing in sync. It had been almost a religious experience, and, if one had asked, might have significantly influenced Erwin’s decision to take the associate lawyer’s position at Sonoma and Sons in the heart of San Francisco.

“Oh, not at all, son,” his father said, surreptitiously wiping a tear from his eye as Erwin crumpled up the wrapping paper and chucked it into the already overflowing garbage bag in the corner of the living room designated for just such this purpose. “We know you’ll be so busy with your fancy lawyering job, and it’s important to your mom and me that there’s something watching out for you. You know, making sure you get your three squares a day and you have clean underwear in your drawers.” Oh, no. Papa Smith was dangerously close to tears, if the furious bristling of his bushy eyebrows and equally as bushy mustache had been anything to go by. Erwin hastily accepted the gift before the waterworks started, and hefted the long cardboard box over his shoulder to slot it into the only remaining spot in the trunk of his SUV.

* * *

 

That had been three days ago. According to Erwin’s mother, he hadn’t even driven off their property yet when his father had started bawling. Since then, his mother informed him over the grainy FaceTime connection – she kept pointing it at the floor instead of her face, presumably in attempts to see Erwin better – his father had been cooped up in the henhouse, moping over his chickens and reassuring himself with their cheerful clucking. In other news, their egg output had never been higher, and did Erwin want some eggs?

“No thanks, Ma,” Erwin replied, propping his phone up against a roll of paper towels while he continued unpacking the rest of the kitchen cleaning supplies his mother had stuffed into a suitcase, the Windex and Comet powder wrapped up in a few old T-shirts. “They’ll probably break in the post. You know how USPS can be.”

He was finishing up the long, three-day process of moving into his new apartment in San Francisco, a tiny little closet of a place with doors that Erwin could barely squeeze through and cabinets just big enough to hold a single squeeze bottle of barbecue sauce. The only large thing left to be unpacked was the housekeeper, although, hands on hips and surveying his new domain, Erwin privately couldn’t help but imagine that there probably wouldn’t be much housekeeping to be done. The apartment was exorbitantly expensive for a space roughly the size of a matchbox, but he supposed it would be rather rude of him not to make use of the gift he’d been given.

He sat down on the floor, his mother still chattering away about their 362 chickens, each individually named, and pulled out the contents of the android’s box, laying them out on the linoleum of the kitchen floor. After he’d unpacked all of the components, his mother had moved on to the problem of the county fair and what type of preserves she was going to bring to the jam-making contest, and his kitchen floor was covered with pieces of cream-colored plastic wrapped in their own individual vacuum-packed plastic bags, labeled with large black numbers. The instruction manual was as fat as a textbook, and Erwin nearly groaned in dismay. He had half a mind to put all the parts back into the box, jamming them in haphazardly and flinging the thing into some unused corner of the apartment, but his mother had finally managed to figure out how to aim the camera at herself in such a way that she was able to focus her beady blue eyes on him and ask him how he was progressing with the gift she and his father had gotten him.

He replied that it was going very well indeed. Fortunately she couldn’t see the detritus of the android laid out on his kitchen floor, or she probably would have had a conniption and booked the soonest flight out of Nebraska to come and help him straighten out his kitchen.

His mother tottered off to bed a few minutes later, stifling a yawn and wishing him pleasant dreams with a strict reminder to remember to drink a warm glass of milk before bed and not to stay up too late. He smiled, waved at his well-meaning mother, and hung up the call before turning back to the pieces of the android littered all over his kitchen floor.

Pulling a freshly-purchased six pack of beer out of the fridge and a packet of salt and vinegar chips from the pantry, Erwin sat back down, his plaid pajama pants loose around his hips as he popped the twist-off cap off a bottle of Blue Moon and squinted at the rather hefty instruction manual again.

Three hours, three beers, and the entire packet of chips later, Erwin sat back to look at what he had accomplished. It was no model airplane, and Erwin was certainly no rocket scientist, but it certainly looked like all the parts were in the right place, the hands attached neatly to the ends of the arms, the head balanced firmly on the slender neckpiece. It was quite a work of art, if he were to say so himself, taking another pull on his Blue Moon and reveling in the effervescent dark bitterness sliding neatly down his throat, leaving a trail of orange in its wake. It seemed almost a shame that it was just meant for cleaning purposes.

Brushing the chip crumbs off his pajama pants, Erwin stood up – a bit woozily, what was the alcohol content in these? – to plug the android’s charger into the wall. He tapped his preset passcode into the control panel on the android’s chest, holding his breath in eager anticipation, and watched in half-drunken amazement as the robot twitched and slowly began to move with a soft whirring of motors, gears clicking away with precise mechanical ticks.

Eyes, glossy black and flat, regarded him with what seemed like a faint amount of distaste.

Its mouth opened, swinging wide and dramatic on its hinges, a screw popping loose. Both Erwin and the android looked at the tiny metallic screw pinging across the floor, before rolling cheerily off underneath the refrigerator, never to be seen again.

The android’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Erwin, reaching up to hold the right side of his jaw up. “You have installed my battery pack backwards,” the robot informed him in a tone that was far too realistic for comfort. Something out of a science fiction movie that Erwin had watched when he was twelve, eyes wide as he took in the staticky image on the television screen. Its eyes narrowed as it scanned his floor, littered with deflated plastic bags and empty beer bottles. “And you have crumbs all over your floor.”

Erwin woke up the next morning, his head aching something fierce, his back in knots from the uncomfortable lumpy cushions and broken springs of the couch the previous tenant had so graciously left behind along with their molding shower curtain and half a square of toilet paper. His mouth felt furry, his lips chapped with the memories of vinegar acidity, and he trudged to the apartment’s pocket of a bathroom, where he stuck his head beneath the leaky faucet and took a mouthful of cold, tinny-tasting water. As he swallowed, the water wriggling cool paths through his belly, he heard a slapping, clanking sort of noise from the general vicinity of the kitchen, and froze, his insides freezing.

Oh, how foolish he’d been, he scolded himself as he hunted about the bathroom for something, anything that he could use to fend off a potential attacker. His mother had expressly warned him about this, hadn’t she? She’d seen far too many Lifetime movies with this exact scenario. But no, Erwin had been stubborn, and he was fairly sure that the baseball bat he’d brought along in the hopes of joining some sort of team here was in his sardine can of a bedroom across the hallway.

The clanking grew louder. Erwin’s knuckles went white from the grip he had on the bathroom counter. His eyes darted around the tiny room, looking for potential weapons. Step, step, step. Oh, dear God. There was no use for it. Erwin would have to try to climb out the window if possible, because he was far too young to die like this.

A knock on the bathroom door. A mechanical, whirring sort of voice. “When user is ready, user is informed that he has been diagnosed with dehydration caused by copious consumption of alcohol and fried potato. Black coffee and sustenance have been prepared. Does user require any assistance?”

Erwin was silent, trying to think of what to say through the pounding in his head, which had turned into a rather nasty throbbing.

“If user does not reply in thirty seconds, emergency actions will be taken as part of security protocol,” the disjointed voice informed him. Blearily, Erwin was jogged into action, flinging open the bathroom door to come face-to-face with his SONY Housekeeper 228, hair neatly coiffed, jaw screwed back in properly. It was wearing one of his old T-shirts and boxer shorts, and would have looked rather human save for the glossiness of his plastic limbs and the almost indiscernible hinges that hooked his limbs together. The android eyed him carefully. Erwin eyed him back, just as carefully, a look that probably lost most of its force by the fact that he couldn’t concentrate on the android’s upturned face for too long – the milky sunlight spilling in through the cracked bathroom window was bouncing straight off the android’s forehead into Erwin’s eyes.

“Emergency actions relaxed,” the android chirped mechanically, turning on its heel and marching stiffly off to the kitchen. “User’s mortality confirmed. Please have your nutrition.”

Too confused to make a coherent reply, Erwin allowed himself to be led to the kitchen, where a plate of perfectly bland scrambled eggs awaited him.


	2. “ヽ(눈▽눈)ノ”

Had Erwin’s pathetic excuse for a living room had enough space for a television, Erwin would have been able to see the commercials running for the SONY Housekeeper 228 model recall. According to scientists from SONY, as well as a number of other unconfirmed sources, these particular models were not running as planned due to an incorrect program being uploaded into their control moduli during installation, perhaps by a rather disgruntled employee. The program, though not malicious, had not fully been tested, and as such, SONY was requesting that all consumers or recipients of this particular housekeeper model, from September 2014 onwards, please return it to a designated electronics facility. A full reimbursement would be provided.

Unfortunately, Erwin’s tiny living room had just barely enough space for even himself, let alone a television, and so he was blissfully unaware of the product recall. His well-meaning mother clicked the television to another channel the instant the SONY logo appeared on the flickering screen, clutching the remote to her chest and sobbing into a crocheted doily because it reminded her far too much of her son, whom, despite the fact that he called her no less than 3 times a day, she still missed dearly.

* * *

 

The first day of work dawned bright and early, the air redolent with the soft salty scent of the sea blowing in through the bedroom window that Erwin had left cracked last night in the hopes of being able to hear the first tweets of the birds in the morning. So far, no dice, and all he’d heard as he traipsed about his room pulling himself into his clothes were the insistent honking of horns in the street below and the brash yelling of a waffle vendor who had taken it upon himself to set up his stall directly below Erwin’s bedroom window. Perhaps, he thought to himself, if he strained his ears very hard, he would be able to hear the cawing of seagulls over by the cliffs.

There! He could hear it now, their chirruping and cooing and –

His bedroom door burst open, banging off against the wall and sending a miniscule shower of plaster raining down from the stucco ceiling. Utterly cowed, Erwin turned, half a centimeter at a time, to come eye to eye with his housekeeper android, whom in a fit of inspiration he had christened Levi. The name might or might not have had something to do with Erwin’s favorite brand of jeans, a pair of which he was currently sporting now, all soft and almost sky blue, distressed denim faded from several trips through the washing machine.

“Oh.” Levi stopped short, his mouth a straight, pursed line that Erwin could have sworn looked almost like surprise. Perhaps a faint tinge of disapproval. Okay, no, that was more than a faint tinge. The android looked downright irritated. “User is awake.” He fiddled with a little dial at the plastic sculpted hollow of his throat, and the chirping stopped abruptly.

“My name is Erwin,” Erwin enunciated, loudly and slowly. “Not user. Erwin.”

“Erwin, then,” Levi parroted back at him. “The current time is 7:04 A.M. Pacific Standard Time. You will be late to work.”

“What?” Erwin goggled at him, furrowing bushy eyebrows at him. “I have plenty of time to get to the office. It’s only a few blocks away.”

Levi stared at him, unnerving, glassy eyes catching the light just so. Erwin would not have been surprised to see him wrinkle his nose in disgust. “Erwin is certainly not intending to wear that outfit to his place of employment?” The android’s voice sounded uncharacteristically distressed, his vocal tones nearly shrill. In fact, it reminded Erwin of his mother, and he thought about her with fondness. He’d give her a call after work today to let her know how his first day had gone, and he was already anticipating hearing her voice crackly and staticky over the telephone wires.

“Why?” he asked, frowning down at himself. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”

Levi sighed, impatient. Erwin was quite sure this type of behavior had not been mentioned in the instruction manual, though, if he was being honest with himself, he’d skimmed over the more boring parts, the parts written in 8 point font that droned on for pages and pages about the warranty and small parts and choking hazards for children under the age of three. The commercials had certainly never mentioned anything about this, but then again, Erwin had been taught in school never to explicitly trust anything that was broadcast over the flickering display of his television screen. In retrospect, this was probably why Erwin had a savage mistrust of such things like genetically modified organisms, spray cheese in a can, and Republicans.

“To my understanding,” Levi tossed back over his shoulder as he turned on his heel and marched towards Erwin’s matchbox of a closet, riffling through his clothes, “Erwin’s chosen profession is a reputable one in American society. Denim is unacceptable for a human of your position.” Levi pulled out a pair of slacks that had certainly seen better days, narrowing his glassy eyes at them as he whapped them through the air. Motes of dust danced in the milky light. “I will press these for you. Please undress.”

Erwin had delicate sensibilities, and when it became apparent that Levi would not leave the room without direct prompting, he kindly, but firmly, asked the android for some privacy. Levi tilted his head to the side, at an angle that had Erwin’s neck hurting in empathetic pain. “Privacy?” he asked with a frown. “This word is not in my default uploaded vocabulary database. Please explain yourself.”

“I would like to undress by myself. With you out of the room,” Erwin blustered. Levi arched a fine eyebrow at him. Erwin threw a glance at the digital clock on his nightstand. 7:17 AM, it shot back at him in cherry red numbers. If Levi didn’t hurry up and skedaddle out of the room this instant, Erwin was afraid he might have to resort to some drastic measures for the sake of preserving his decency if he wanted to get to the office on time. His mother had always stressed the importance of punctuality.

Fortunately, Levi only gave him a slightly – dare he say it? – suspicious look as he handed Erwin the sharply creased slacks and did a tight 360, pivoting on one shiny heel with a dexterity that Erwin was quite impressed by. Certainly SONY had been updating their technology ever since his father had bought that VCR back in the 90s. The bedroom door clicked firmly behind him, and, scolding himself for his childishness, Erwin made sure that it was locked before he unbuttoned his jeans and shrugged himself into the slacks.

* * *

 

Levi squinted at him critically as Erwin stepped out of his bedroom, his briefcase swinging jauntily at his side. The briefcase in question was currently empty, bearing only a few pens, a pad of yellow legal paper, and a spare tie. All the fancy lawyers in the television shows always seemed to have a spare tie, and Erwin would be damned if he didn’t fit the part exactly.

“Well, I’m off to work, then,” he said, awkwardly, trying not to blush in front of Levi’s scrutiny – it was just a robot, for goodness’ sake, he reminded himself sternly. “Try not to burn down the apartment while I’m gone.”

Levi escorted him to the front door, with only mildly reassuring promises that he would do nothing of the sort.


	3. (눈v눈)

Thoughts about his renegade housekeeping android fled his mind once Erwin stepped through the heavy revolving doors at the front of the building that housed Sonoma and Sons, as well as several other small corporate legal firms. He had been entranced, pushing at the push bar with gleeful rapture; he’d only seen these types of doors in movies, usually set in New York or Los Angeles, the cast dominated with men in sharp suits and women in teetering high heels that made them mince along like baby gazelles. Erwin had managed to stop himself from going around a fourth time, because he’d happened to glance at his watch and had found that he would most certainly be late if he didn’t hurry up to the seventeenth floor right this instant. It also hadn’t helped that the silver-haired receptionist at the front desk had been giving him funny looks ever since he’d made his second 360. She almost didn’t buzz him up, demanding to see his driver’s license and proof of employment at Sonoma and Sons before she pursed her burgundy-painted lips tightly together and jabbed violently at a few numbers on the keypad of the telephone on her desk.

“Uh huh, mmhmm,” she muttered into the receiver, her eyes flicking back and forth from his image on his plastic ID to his face and back again. “Says he’s working as an associate lawyer in 1753? Goes by” – she squinted at the identification card she was holding between her thumb and forefinger – “Erwin Smith? Mmhmm. Yeah. Alright.” She set the phone down back into its cradle, sliding the card back across the counter to him with a very long, manicured fingernail so glossy Erwin could almost see his reflection in it.

“New to the city, I take it?” she asked as she got up from her swivel chair and indicated that he was to follow her to the grey bank of elevators waiting behind her. Her high heels clicked on the marble floors as she walked across the lobby to swipe a badge across a gleaming black scanner embedded in the wall; the elevator to Erwin’s left slid open with a small pinging sound not quite unlike what their old John Deere tractor had made to announce that it was out of petrol. “I’ve never seen someone so fascinated by a revolving door before.”

“Er, yes, that I am,” Erwin replied, a bit shamefaced as he stepped into the elevator. The woman – her nametag read RICO B. – leaned into the elevator to swipe her badge at yet another black panel embedded into the gleaming elevator wall. “I’ve only seen them in movies.”

Rico coughed, a smile perking up the corners of her mouth as she jabbed at the 17 button and stepped back out of the elevator. She smiled and waved at him as the doors closed, and, hesitantly, he waved back, wishing her a good rest of the day.

* * *

 

Once the doors slid shut in front of Erwin, Rico tapped back to her swivel chair at the front of the lobby, and popped a wad of sugary bubblegum into her mouth, grinning around the sticky mouthful as she clicked open her incognito Facebook window and messaged her friends about the new hire in Sonoma and Sons with the thick Midwestern accent and the corn blonde hair and the fascination with revolving doors.

* * *

 

After forcibly drawing himself away from the view out the glass wall of the seventeenth floor – he could just make out the tips of the Golden Gate Bridge rising rusty and red over the banks of fog swooping in from the bay – Erwin knocked politely on the door of Suite 1753, where he was greeted by another receptionist with silver-highlighted hair. He wondered if this was one of those fashion trends his mother had warned him about, like weaves and bell bottoms and something incongruously explained as “the boots with the fur.”

He was ushered in, plied with a Styrofoam cup of instant coffee that he nearly dropped, burning against his palm, and told to sit on the couch until someone could help him. That someone appeared a few moments later, in the form of another tall, blonde man who stuck his meaty hand out, hauling Erwin up from his seat on the couch and introducing himself as “Michael Zacharias, call me Mike.” He all but dragged Erwin over to the office they’d be sharing together, a little glass cubby that didn’t seem to be enough space for Mike, let alone for the two of them.

“Sorry about the mess,” Mike mumbled over his shoulder, shoving a few haphazardly put-together stacks of paper off one desk onto the other. “The last guy resigned in disgrace, threw everything around the office. A stapler hit a paralegal in the forehead. An utter mess, really. Whatever you do,” he fixed Erwin with an icy look, his scrappy mustache twitching from side to side in perceived indignation, “do not resign in disgrace. One of the worst things you can do in this city. Rico’ll have the word out within half an hour and you’ll never be able to step a foot into another law firm here as long as you live.”

Erwin set his briefcase and untouched Styrofoam cup of coffee down on the recently vacated desktop, making a mental note to never, ever resign in disgrace. However one could do that. He was certain he’d seen a very staticky episode of Parks and Recreation on the television once, in between football games and live coverage of the Cornhuskers’ Festival, where such a phenomenon had occurred. He would have to research it later, specifically for the purposes of learning what to do to avoid committing such a heinous crime.

“Right, then,” Mike said, after Erwin had settled himself down behind his now pristine desk, pulling out his yellow legal pad and his pencils, lining them up neatly at the edge of the desk. Mike shoved a rather daunting pile of contracts across the miniscule gap between their two desks, nearly overturning Erwin’s Styrofoam cup of coffee into the potted ficus to the side of the desks, which, upon further inspection, was looking somewhat jaundiced. “You can get started with that lot this week, and we’ll see how you go from there. Just read over it, make sure the loopholes are all nice and tight, signatures in place, all that jazz.”

Right around 11:20 AM, when Erwin was sure he’d probably need reading glasses in the next two years from straining to read all the fine print, Mike slammed a rather frighteningly thick book shut, making the now-cold sludge in Erwin’s Styrofoam cup ripple. “Right, you know what you want for lunch?” Mike asked, flicking his hair out of his eyes and sniffing. “I think we’re getting Chinese today.” He passed a takeout menu to Erwin, who took it, gratified to see that it was a thick brochure with plenty of pictures, the font bigger and much more readable than 8 pt. Adobe Caslon Pro.

But goodness, he’d had no idea Chinese cuisine was so extensive! Erwin spent the better part of ten minutes gawking at the menu, reading through all the different choices – noodles or rice, chow mein or lo mein, pork or shrimp – before finally grasping to the only familiar thing on the menu with relief (teriyaki chicken with egg fried rice).

Erwin read over another few contracts during lunch, forking up pieces of chicken into his mouth – he had yet to master the art of using chopsticks. Mike spent the rest of the day scribbling rather loudly and dramatically across several files, slamming the large book shut with every scrawled signature, making Erwin’s coffee cup dance across to the edge of the desk until it upended itself into the ficus, which seemed to sigh in expected disappointment.

Erwin thought he could quite relate to the poor, abused plant.

* * *

 

Erwin hadn’t had a chance to slot his key into the front door of his apartment before it was swinging open, Levi’s glassy black eyes peeping out at him from behind the door hinge. Eyes aching, tired from the strain of reading through a grand total of six legal contracts fraught with references to the most obscure clauses in American law, Erwin hadn’t the heart to reprimand his housekeeping android for opening the door to strangers.

“I have prepared your nightly sustenance,” Levi intoned mechanically, taking Erwin’s briefcase and setting it on the floor by the front door. Heartened by the thought of a good, heavy meal to square him off for the rest of the night, Erwin allowed himself to be led to the kitchen. Levi set a plate of absolutely minuscule proportions in front of him, a broiled chicken breast, a small pile of brown rice, and an even larger pile of wilted, steamed spinach. “I have computed your calorific requirements. You will find this adequate.”

Levi’s tone seemed to leave no room for argument, and, cowed, and almost slightly guilty about the greasy teriyaki chicken and fried rice he had eaten earlier that day, Erwin took a tentative bite. It tasted exactly like beige, thoroughly underwhelming, and Erwin had half a mind to call for a takeout pizza instead – now, that, he could navigate his way around – but Levi had plopped himself into the chair opposite and was watching him with beady bright eyes that tracked the trajectory of his fork to his mouth. Before he knew it, due to some combination of Levi’s intense scrutiny and his Midwestern upbringing rooted deep in politeness, Erwin was scraping the plate clean and declaring that he was utterly stuffed.

With what could almost be construed as a smile, Levi took the plate from him and set about washing it vigorously under the drip of the kitchen tap.

* * *

 

Erwin waited until Levi announced that he would be plugging himself into Hibernate for the rest of the night (“Unless Erwin has any future demands or human eccentricities?” No, Erwin had assured him) before tiptoeing out of the apartment to the corner chip shop and inhaling a bag and a half of salt and vinegar chips.


	4. (눈௰눈)

Work progressed as mundanely as it possibly could have for someone with a job in the legalities and loopholes of contract law. Erwin slowly managed to tame his absurd fascination with the revolving doors – most days he only went around twice, much to Rico’s persistent amusement – and watered the ficus daily with the sludge that passed for coffee that the receptionist handed him in a Styrofoam cup every morning. Erwin swore the plant was looking more dejected by the day, its leaves drooping over the rim of the terra cotta pot. He had never seen Mike water it, and could only assume that the plant had belonged to the last associate lawyer, the shadow of whose nameplate still gleamed on the corner of the desk.

He had asked Mike about the previous associate before him. Mike had eyed him over the table, bristled his mustache rather furiously at him, and sniffed before leaning over the minuscule divide between the two desks. Casting his eyes around the office – the receptionist was talking on the phone and blatantly playing solitaire on her desktop, the door to the conference board room was closed, their boss’s muffled voice booming through the wood, and the other associate lawyers were wrinkling their noses and sipping at the caffeinated sludge as they pored over infinite stacks of contracts and other assorted legal documents – Mike whispered, in what felt suspiciously like a stage whisper, that Erwin was not to mention the previous associate lawyer, and to act as though he’d never existed. Erwin found it a bit suspicious, but he quickly forgot about it in the scintillating rush of excitement that days at the office tended to bring.

He’d been exposed to so many new cuisines and so many new phrases - who would have known that Netflix and chill actually meant inviting someone over to have sexual shenanigans with under a pretext of watching digitally streamed television shows? It had certainly been news to Erwin. Much like the concept of Netflix had been, as well as the concept of streaming television shows digitally from the comforts of one’s couch or one’s bed.

Certainly it was a culture shock, but as the first Friday at work rolled around, Erwin thought he was adjusting quite well. He’d even gotten relaxed enough to loosen his tie and roll up his shirtsleeves in the office, and stop jumping whenever Mike slammed that horrendously thick book that always seemed to be present on the corner of his desk. He had yet to figure out what exactly the book was – he’d caught a glimpse of the dusty burgundy cover with the gold gilt letters just briefly on a particularly violent slam, but had yet to decipher the full title. He figured it was just some rather heavy legal text that Mike needed to reference in order to make sure his piles of contracts were shipshape, and wondered if perhaps he should invest in some such legal encyclopedia himself. It would certainly save him quite a bit of time from tapping away on his Dell keyboard with the keys that stuck from time to time. This, and the fact that Erwin’s typing speed paralleled that of a gerbil’s, did not make for particularly productive workdays.

At precisely three-thirty PM that Friday, Mike rolled up his shirtsleeve to look at his watch, slammed the legal book violently one last time, and looked expectantly across the desk at Erwin, who was still squinting laboriously at his computer monitor and trying to make heads and tails of some obscure clause from the 1920s that was inexplicably written in Victorian English. Something involving goats and the ownership of public property? He couldn’t quite tell, but quickly became aware of Mike’s gaze resting on him.

Tearing his gaze away from the screen, Erwin met Mike’s gaze head on. He was staring at him with narrowed eyes, a scrutiny that Erwin had not been subject to since the fourth grade in the principal’s office, because he had been the rather unfortunate victim of an Easter egg prank gone horribly wrong. To cut a long story short, the supposedly plastic egg his mother had packed him off to school with in his lunchbox had not been plastic, nor had it even been boiled, and Erwin had accidentally splattered a classmate with raw yolk when they’d been playing the egg toss.

“Er, can I help you?” Erwin asked, arching a rather thick eyebrow at his coworker. In the past, this sort of action would have been taken as a rather heinous offense or a rather thick come-on, causing girls to swoon all over themselves and their hoop skirts. Fortunately, Mike was not one for swooning, nor was he one for intimidation, and he privately thought Erwin’s eyebrows could have used a good tweezing or three.

“We usually take off early on Fridays,” Mike explained, nodding his head towards the glass windows of their office, where the other associate lawyers had started to pack up their belongings into their briefcases, tugging at the knots of their silk ties and turning off their desktop monitors for the weekend ahead. “Happy Hour starts at four. You’re more than welcome to join us. Two dollar margaritas and all-you-can-eat Indian inspired tapas at the bar down the street.”

Erwin was confused. Margaritas? Indian-inspired tapas? Well, he thought to himself, stacking the remaining contracts on the side of his desk and tipping the rest of his coffee into the dejected ficus, when in Rome. Clicking off his desktop monitor and rubbing at his aching eyes, Erwin stood up and followed Mike out the door.

* * *

 

The margaritas in question were frozen mango margaritas, a brilliant rosy orange that Erwin had only seen in fairy tale books with pictures and on the blushing curves of the first peaches of the season. Erwin sipped contemplatively at his third – or was it his fourth? – frosted glass, the chilled tequila spilling across his tongue and numbing the back of his throat. He nibbled at the snacks the waitresses brought to the table in little plates slicked with bright, colorful sauces and minuscule amounts of food. Chickpeas dabbled in honey and soy, curry powder popcorn that all but melted in buttery spiciness across his tongue, chai infused rice pudding, little spiced balls of tapioca bursting delightfully with the slightest pressure from his tongue.

The sticky table in front of him slowly filled with empty glasses and empty plates with leftover dabbles of sauce that the waitresses periodically whisked away. Mike was bristling his mustache at Rico, who was tapping at crumbs on the table surface with her long, glossy nails, which had slowly become more chipped over the course of the week from several furious games of Solitaire and frantic bouts of instant messaging with her friends in other corporate offices and lobbies across the city.

“So, Erwin,” she slurred drunkenly at him, her eyes bright as she examined him over the tops of her glasses. “You got any weekend plans?” She waggled her eyebrows at him, and Erwin gawked at her, taken aback by her forwardness.

“No,” he replied, taking another hasty gulp of the margarita that had magically reappeared at the table to replace his empty glass. “Just seeing the sights, I guess. Exploring the city. Nothing too fancy.”

“Oh, is that right?” Rico asked, grinning giddily. “No special little lady in your life, then, eh?” Before he could even think of an adequate reply, Mike had nudged Rico, twitching his mustache in what looked like warning at her, and Rico held up her hands, ragged manicure and all, in feigned innocence. Apparently this was not a new occurrence, but Erwin was still reeling by her directness even after the taxi had dropped him off in front of his apartment, carting Mike and Rico and a few other associates whose names Erwin had already forgotten off into the darkness. They’d invited Erwin to go to another bar – four-dollar dozen oysters! Mike had informed him, and a strip club after that, but Erwin had politely declined. He was unsure he’d be able to resist Rico’s intoxicated advances for much longer, and his mother had raised him better than that.

Tottering up the stairs to his apartment – he couldn’t quite figure out how to work the buttons on the elevator, much to the amusement of a man who looked to be delivering Chinese takeaway – Erwin managed to slot his key into the lock and, after a few vigorous turns that nearly had his wrist popping out of its socket, slumped against the door, which fell open beneath his weight.

Smiling drunkenly and scratching at his stomach through his dress shirt, Erwin smacked his lips and headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. Maybe a packet of chips.

Entering the darkened kitchen, Erwin fumbled around the wall for the light switch before two glowing green lights snapped on in the darkness in the vicinity of the kitchen table. The neon green glow illuminated Levi’s face, seemingly disjointed from the rest of his body, and Erwin yelped, the fear cutting through the fug of alcohol. He tripped over himself as he backed away from Levi’s slowly advancing eyes, scrabbling along the hardwood floor for purchase.

His back ran up against the peeling wallpaper of the kitchen wall. Trapped. Cornered like a rat. Erwin, all 197 pounds of him, quivered like a small child and contemplated calling for his mother as the twin glowing green lights approached, looking into his face.

“You are intoxicated,” Levi informed him, and Erwin almost laughed hysterically. It was like something out of a horror movie, and he was far too young to die, but his stubborn mango-margarita-laden limbs refused to cooperate with him. “Please come with me.”

One of Levi’s hands maneuvered its way beneath Erwin’s arm, hauling him up onto his feet and leading him, staggering, to the bathroom. Levi flicked on the lights, causing Erwin to wince at the unexpected brightness, and the green light behind his glassy eyes slowly faded away until the irises were a neutral black once more.

“You must have a wash,” Levi said, prodding him forwards towards the tub. “Would Erwin like me to help him with his buttons?”

Erwin stared at him dumbly, trying to squint past the bright lights and attempting to ignore the throbbing that was starting up at the base of his skull. Levi eyed the buttons on his dress shirt beadily, looking from Erwin’s face to his buttons and back again.

“Erwin has this concept of privacy,” Levi clarified after a few moments of silence. “Levi will respect this.” With that, Levi turned on one smoothly polished heel and marched out of the bathroom, shutting the door with a very definitive click behind him.

Slumping on the side of the tub, Erwin struggled with his buttons for a moment before wriggling out of the thing entirely, buttons pinging off the tiles and seams creaking as they stretched over his shoulders. He stood under the shower spray, boiling hot and freezing cold by turns, leaning his forehead against the slick tiles, and wondering if perhaps he might someday find someone in this lovely city to lay claim to his weekends.

But that was a thought for another day, perhaps when he was more sober and more coherent and more awake, and he stepped out of the shower, wrapped himself in the fluffy clean towel Levi had set on the bathroom counter for him, and tottered off down the hall to bed.

His last cohesive memories before succumbing to drunken slumber were of plastic and silicone hands tucking the blankets around him, and the soft glow of green dancing across his closed eyelids.


	5. ೕ(눈ㅂ눈)

Erwin woke up with a fuzzy mouth and a throbbing headache, waves of pain washing from the base of his skull to his forehead. The sun was glaring in through the chinks in between the blinds of his bedroom window, shining straight over his eyelids, and with a muffled groan and a swell of nausea roiling in the pit of his stomach, Erwin grasped the comforter and rolled over, pulling the downy blanket over his head and burrowing his cheek into the cool cotton of his pillowcase.

Frozen mango margaritas. He knew he shouldn’t have trusted them. His father had always warned him never to drink anything that had more than three syllables and came in a color lighter than pale ale. But the waitresses had kept sweeping away the empty cocktail glasses and replacing them with fresh ones, and Erwin couldn’t possibly justify the waste of their hard work.

And God. What was that banging? Erwin wasn’t used to all the city noise choking the air with incessant sound. Lazy weekend mornings at home, when the sun was still peeping rosy fingers over the horizon, all was still, the world hushed and waiting to start a new day. He would rub a stubbly cheek against his pillowcase, resting in a state of soft half-slumber while the world slowly woke up around him, the soft trills of morning birds, cows bleating in the barn, and then the gentle creakings of the house as his mother woke up. Her heavy tread on the wooden stairs, and then the gurgling of water in the pipes, the soft clink of pots and pans on the stove coils.

She would start breakfast, the heavy door of the refrigerator sucking open and falling closed, and he’d wake up fully to the scent of coffee and the comforting smells of eggs and bacon and potatoes frying in the pan.

His stomach growled with wistful nostalgia, and Erwin groaned, torn between abject nausea and hunger that threatened to gnaw a hole in his belly. On cue, his bedroom door swung open with a creak on its hinges, and little plastic and silicone feet tapped across the hardwood floor.

“Erwin is awake,” Levi announced in an almost gleeful monotone that shattered through Erwin’s head. A pause, then, suspicious quiet filled with the sounds of cars honking and vendors announcing their wares in the street below. A prod to his cheek through the comforter, and he groaned, rolling away from the touch. “Is Erwin hungry?”

“Erwin is hungover,” Erwin groaned, trying – and failing – to tug the comforter away from Levi’s grabby hands. The android eyed him beadily as he pulled the blanket away from Erwin’s face, golden sunlight shafting through the gaps in the blinds, and Erwin threw an arm over his eyelids, trying to think of ice cream, watermelon, iced sweet tea, anything cold to draw his thoughts away from the heated throbbing pounding against the inside of his skull.

“Hungover.” Levi sounded contemplative, and, having noted Erwin’s level of distress, flung the comforter back over him. “Levi does not know this word. Spell check has confirmed it is not a word. Is Erwin gravely ill? Does Erwin require medical assistance?”

Levi’s chattering and the rapid clicking of his mouth on its hinges sounded like a particularly furious jackhammer in his brain. Erwin gritted his teeth, trying to formulate appropriate commands, something, anything, to convey an abject longing for his mother’s fry-up breakfasts, a large mug of dark coffee, and an aspirin or three.

The plug-in phone he’d set up in the kitchen rang loudly, and Erwin buried his face in his pillow, all but sobbing for his mother. Levi’s feet tapped away, the hinges of the door creaking again as the housekeeper android headed to the kitchen to answer the shrills of the telephone.

Blessed quiet fell over the apartment again, punctuated only by the bangs from the apartment upstairs. It sounded perhaps like they were doing some very rhythmic dance, or maybe following a vigorous workout video – that would certainly explain the muffled groans of exertion and the little showers of plaster that dusted down over his comforter that accompanied every thud.

“Erwin.” He had been so lost in the noises from upstairs, which had started to escalate into shrieks, and was just starting to contemplate perhaps calling the local authorities to report a murder, when Levi’s voice cut through his thoughts again. Levi was nudging his forehead this time with the blunt end of the telephone. “It appears to be a woman by the name of Ma. Would you like to take this call?”

Erwin groaned again. The woman upstairs screamed. He stuck a hand out from beneath the toasty warmth of his blanket, taking the phone from Levi and pressing it against his ear.

“Hello?” he asked, his voice thick in his mouth.

“Erwin!” His mother sounded pleasantly surprised, and also managed to sound frighteningly suspicious. “Who was that lovely young man that answered your phone?”

Erwin had never quite gotten around to discussing his sexual orientation with his parents. His father had always waved away attempts to discuss anything even remotely emotionally-related, and his mother had always patted him on the head and told him she knew he had delicate sensibilities, they were related after all. Thankfully, his mother didn’t sound the least bit angry, although if he strained his ears to hear above the soft sobbing now coming from upstairs, he thought he could hear his father shouting about San Francisco and rampant liberalism somewhere in the background.

“Oh,” he mumbled, rubbing a hand over his face and frowning at the roughness of the crop of stubble that had sprouted up along his jaw over the night. “No, Ma. That’s just the housekeeping android you and Dad got me. I named him Levi.”

Erwin was aware that Levi was still hovering over him; the android’s shadow was falling over his face and blocking the sunlight, thankfully. Erwin decided to let him stay for a bit longer, or at least just until the sun moved a bit. Maybe the ceiling would cave in – the thudding had started up again, picking up in velocity like a Formula 1 race car from the starting line – and the resulting debris would block out the light.

“Oh?” His mother’s voice still sounded a tad suspicious, but there was a fine layer of disappointment over her words. He knew she’d been waiting for him to bring home a nice girl – or boy – ever since he and Marie had had that little falling-out some years ago. The last he’d heard of her, she’d gotten engaged, married, and had two children in rapid succession with a young man from a soy bean farm. “It’s amazing the stuff these tech companies come up with these days. I could have sworn it was a real young man.”

“Mm,” Erwin agreed. He could tell Levi was champing at the bit, desperate to know what was being said about him; the android was fidgeting and twitching, grabby hands toward the comforter as though he might rip it away from Erwin’s face again and demand him to put the device on speakerphone. Incorrigible, really, like a puppy or a very small child. A very small puppy? His mother was off chattering again about the upcoming county fair where she was going to try to win the blue ribbon for the biggest pumpkin of the season, she’d been soaking Christopher (the pumpkin in question) in creamy milk and he was a real whopper, she’d have to wheel him there in a barrow she’d borrowed from the neighbors, his father couldn’t lift it because she didn’t want him to throw out his back, and did he know that Miss Susie from down the street’s cat had had its kittens, and oh by the way how was Erwin doing, how was his job, was he getting his three squares and ten Z’s a day like a growing boy should?

“Yes, Ma,” Erwin agreed absentmindedly, his mother’s soothing voice washing away the pain of the hangover and almost drowning out the vigorous banging Levi had taken up next to him. Peeking out from beneath the comforter, Erwin watched with vague amusement as Levi banged the handle of a broom on the ceiling, in syncopation with the banging from upstairs. “The job’s going well, I’m eating well, sleeping as well as you possibly can in a big city.”

He and his mother chatted for a bit longer, mundane stuff about her neighbors and who was dating whom and who had given a casserole to whom just the other week and the ramifications behind such a statement. She clicked off some time later, after wishing Erwin good luck with his furniture assembly, and Erwin tapped the end button, folding himself back into his comforter.

Levi was giving a professional drummer a run for their money, and Erwin was vaguely impressed with the vigor the broom handle slapped at the ceiling promptly every two seconds.

“Shut the fuck up!” the people upstairs shouted down, their voices muffled. Erwin privately echoed the sentiment, and reached out a hand to tap the android’s arm. After one last furious bang on the ceiling, Levi’s head swiveled an eerie 90 degrees on the slender stem of his neck, glossy black eyes examining Erwin.

“I have finished searching the Web for hungover,” he informed Erwin. “Several reputable sources indicate that the condition can be alleviated with the application of hot coffee and fried breakfasts. Would Erwin like this?”

“Erwin would like this,” Erwin affirmed, and the corners of Levi’s mouth twitched up mechanically as he set the broom down on the floor and tapped towards the kitchen, soon scenting the air with the comforting smells of frying egg, bacon, and potato.


	6. (눈_눈;)

Had Erwin been keeping up with technological news and output from Silicon Valley at all, he would probably have been tempted to return Levi to his closest department store at the first opportunity that presented himself. Developments on the status of the SONY Housekeeper 228 model had started coming in as models had been returned, and technicians and senior programmers picked apart the program that had been uploaded into the androids’ control moduli during installation. They had determined that, though rudimentary, it was a program designed with endless learning functions embedded in hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Though simple, the command functions had been arranged in such a way as to mimic and copy down new information with relative ease. Erasing the information, or deleting unwanted data, however, was another matter entirely, and the androids that had been sent to the manufacturing plant in Silicon Valley were reported to have displayed a penchant for vulgar vocabulary and had even managed to reduce one particularly distraught programmer to tears after it had said something rather horrendous about his mother.

Something about a hamster and an elderberry. The android had spent much time plopped in front of a television set while its owner was at work, watching and rewatching Monty Python, and could, if prompted, recite the whole of Spamalot. Quite impressive, really.

However, Erwin was not really particularly interested in the technology pages of the newspaper, and so passed those off to Levi to read through, along with the financial section.

Erwin, also having quite a love for breakfast and breakfast foods in general, failed to notice the way Levi’s glassy eyes roved over the tiny typed words, lingering on the phrase ‘SONY Housekeeper 228.’ Absorbed as he was in a perfectly buttered piece of toast, Erwin didn’t see Levi quietly folding away the pages and tucking them away neatly in a drawer. And, had he been paying more attention, Erwin would also have noticed his tiny cracker box of an apartment began to gleam even brighter than it usually did. Nary a crumb was to be seen, and every surface shone.

 

* * *

 

His first weekend in San Francisco, Erwin went out to explore the city, following a trifold map and a guidebook that Rico the receptionist had so kindly provided him with, snickering inexplicably behind the curve of her hand the whole while. Equipped with this, a fanny pack to carry his wallet and keys and cell phone in, and a big floppy hat to match his big floppy camera, Erwin looked all in all a proper tourist.

He explored the Richmond Chinatown, clicking away with loud snaps through the glass front windows of the shops where glistening roast ducks hung, dripping crackling golden oil into metal trays set beneath them. He photographed the distinctive viridian awning of Green Apple Books, where it had been rumored famous authors popped into from time to time to give book signings. He stopped for lunch at a little Quickly Café, where he purchased a little box of popcorn chicken and something called milk tea with pearls, which was a far cry from the lemon sweet tea that his mother used to make by the pitcher during long summer nights. The so-called pearls were black and chewy in his mouth, but all in all, he thought the food quite good, and snapped a couple of pictures with his honking big camera, much to the amusement of the other patrons, who giggled and pointed at him surreptitiously and took photos of him to upload to their Snap stories.

Erwin had yet to discover the concept of SnapChat. Levi already knew all about it; the technology section of the newspaper occasionally had little columns on the second page dedicated to mobile applications, and though Levi did not have a phone, had no use for a phone, he found it quite interesting to keep abreast of such developments.

 

* * *

 

Erwin came back, happily exhausted, with his camera’s memory card full of photographs, many of them of his feet or of the sky where he’d accidentally left the camera on while walking and depressed the button by mistake.

“Look, Levi!” he said, grinning as he plopped down on the sofa. Levi wrinkled his nose in consternation; he’d just fluffed the cushions not even ten minutes prior, in anticipation of Erwin’s return, and – were those crumbs on Erwin’s jacket front? Further analysis proved it to be batter crumbs, possibly from fried meat, and Levi tried valiantly to display a neutral expression as Erwin clicked through all 547 pictures on his camera and brushed crumbs inadvertently onto the sofa. “It was quite interesting, much different from home in Nebraska.”

Stopping himself short, Erwin eyed his housekeeper android from the corner of his eye. The android was staring fixatedly at the camera screen, and Erwin wondered if perhaps it was rude of him to not invite him out to explore the sights of the city as well. Surely Levi hadn’t been outside the boundaries of the apartment, other than to pick up the newspaper from the complex’s stairwell before the neighbors’ yappy, forbidden teacup Yorkie got to it, and surely the poor android wouldn’t have had many other experiences outside of staring at the inside of the manufacturing plant he had been processed in. Erwin frowned. Did androids even want to go out to see the world? Ah, well. It was worth the ask.

“Would you like to come with me tomorrow? I would like to go see Ghirardelli Square, and,” – Erwin swept a hand out over the tiny domain of his empire, brushing crumbs onto the floor. Levi stifled a gasp of horror – “the cleaning can wait a day or so.”

Levi eyed him squarely, contemplatively. He had never heard of humans taking their androids on expeditions, and he had read through his entire instruction manual forwards, backwards, and in the eight translations SONY provided. He vaguely wondered if he was equipped for outdoor usage.

But the weather forecast had said that tomorrow would be a nice, calm day, not too hot and not rainy, and yes, Levi was vaguely intrigued by the prospect of a day out. Even for an android, staring at the same walls and pieces of furniture, it was getting quite boring. That was also another concerning thought. The instruction manual hadn’t said anything about the model getting bored, or wanting to go places, or in fact even having any desire to do anything besides what it had been programmed to do, which was, in this case, cleaning. Levi was quite passionate about cleaning, truthfully, but seeing Erwin’s excitement over exploring the city had seemed to infect his hard drive with the same sort of dangerous enthusiasm, and Levi found himself agreeing. It didn’t look like Erwin would be returning him to the manufacturing plant any time soon, and, yes, it looked indeed like the cleaning could wait for a day or so. Just as soon as Levi picked up those crumbs.


	7. (눈◡눈)

“I cannot go out like this,” Levi informed him in a monotone the next morning. Unbeknownst to Erwin, Levi had not put himself into Hibernate last night, and had spent the entirety of the night alternately watching Erwin snore and slumber – it was fascinating, really, Levi thought that Discovery Channel could hire Erwin as someone who dubbed over clips of roaring bears – and fretting about what he could possibly wear outside tomorrow on their excursion. As such, Levi had taken it upon himself to illegally access and download several catalogues’ worth of back issues of GQ and Vogue and the like, and though he’d rummaged through Erwin’s closet and found it lacking, Levi thought that perhaps it also would not do to go out in only one of Erwin’s ratty old T-shirts and a pair of his shorts, which he had to triple belt around his waist.

“Why? What’s wrong with what you’re wearing now?” Erwin asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes blearily. The sound of birds fluttered in through the cracked window, but alas, as Erwin looked gleefully out into the street, he saw that all the cacophony was just caused by a bunch of pigeons fighting each other over the last remaining French fry some poor passerby had dropped.

Levi was wearing one of Erwin’s old Christmas sweaters that his dear mother had knitted for him during the particularly cold winter of ’02. Dancing reindeer in all sizes and colors paraded across the front. All in all, it was quite horrendous looking, and Erwin loved it fondly. He bristled at the potential offense to his mother’s honor, and was ready to defend it with his dying breath.

“It is far too big for me,” Levi clarified. “As are all your clothes.” Oh. Erwin relaxed again, satisfied that Mama Smith’s knitting skills and fashion sense was not going to be coming under fire any time soon. “And under human statues, exposure and excessive nudity is considered criminal.”

Hmm. Erwin tapped at his chin. This was a problem, indeed, and one that he would have to remedy quickly if he wanted Levi to come with him to see the sights of the city. The hem of the sweater hung to Levi’s mid-thigh, and the sunlight gleaming in through the windows rendered the joints and hinges of Levi’s motor parts nearly invisible. If one looked hard enough, perhaps they might be able to discern a faint gleam where the front and back halves of Levi’s legs came together, but those could easily be passed off as scars or those new-fangled white tattoos people in high society were getting these days. Erwin didn’t quite understand it himself.

He headed for his closet, rummaging through the clothes, which had been inexplicably rearranged into a gradient of color from black to white, and pulled out a thick leather belt that had seen better days.

“You could wear it like a dress!” Erwin proclaimed, gleefully. After all, he had seen Rico wearing just such an ensemble not too long ago, a men’s plaid shirt nipped in tight at the waist with a dark leather belt, and Rico was surely the height of high society. She was clearly a girl who knew how to get around in the crazy world they lived in; no one would have had to tell her what revolving doors were, no, certainly not. Of course, the Christmas sweater was not a men’s plaid shirt, and the leather belt was not sleek and glossy like Rico’s had been, but as Levi picked up the belt curiously, muttering something about how this hadn’t been in GQ, Erwin privately thought that the android looked as cute as the miniature John Deere tractor his father had given him on his sixth birthday.

“This looks odd,” Levi intoned as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. The sleeves of the sweater were still far too long, and Erwin thought it made his housekeeping android look positively dainty. Quaint. It was quite nice, in his humble opinion, and he wasted no time in reassuring Levi that he looked quite the sight, he’d be the envy of all the other androids in the city. Levi’s black eyes gleamed at that, and he jerked his mouth hinges up into what looked like a very uncomfortable smile reminiscent of a small furry animal baring all its teeth at once. Erwin would really have to do something about that.

But now was not the time, and in his excitement, Erwin would completely forget about Levi’s presence in the room as he stripped out of his pajamas and shrugged himself into jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Levi’s eyes goggled at the sight – he certainly didn’t need a GQ magazine to tell him that Erwin was quite attractive, he had all the right body and facial ratios going for him – and if Erwin had been listening more carefully, or if the pigeons in the street hadn’t been squawking something fierce (a pretzel vendor had just appeared on the corner), he might have heard the whirr and click of a shutter, Levi taking several pictures with 1/8 s frames in order to preserve the memory onto his 500 GB hard drive.

* * *

 

Erwin sat down heavily at one of the wrought iron tables in Ghirardelli Square. Despite Levi’s internal navigation systems the two of them had gotten hopelessly lost and had to make several wrong turns. The original programmer of Levi’s code had apparently not been very up to date with modern GPS satellites, and, in uploading the program, had also succeeded in uploading several maps drawn in the late 1700s, many of which still included Atlantis and some of which still had all of the continents conjoined. One wrong turn nearly took them off of a bridge, and it had only been Erwin’s quick thinking and Levi’s aversion to being completely submerged in water that had stopped the two of them from going headlong into the bay.

Erwin looked at the menu. As Rico and the many guide brochures had told him, Ghirardelli Square specialized in chocolates and ice cream sundaes, and looking around at the other happy families and couples sitting at the other tables scattered around the square, he found all of the options appealing.

“What would you like?” he asked kindly as Levi sat down across from him. Several people had shot them odd looks as they were tottering around the city, but Erwin just chalked it up to abject jealousy at his fashionable trendsetter of an android. “Do you have any preferences?”

Levi looked at the menu, looked around the square, and his eyes glowed red for a moment. After some frantic searching through Levi’s instruction manual’s troubleshooting section, Erwin had discovered that the redness was caused by internal scanning mechanisms that the housekeeping model was equipped with in order to pinpoint and snuff out even the most stubborn and subtle of stains. Erwin flapped a hand at Levi to stop; he was scaring the children, and Levi turned back to him.

“I cannot eat,” he informed Erwin, and Erwin felt almost guilty for forgetting. Of course not, how could he? The android didn’t have a stomach, or at least, not one that Erwin had installed. Levi eyed the pictures on the glossy trifold menu beadily. “Mint and chocolate is a good combination, and seems to be quite popular.” He jabbed a plastic and silicone finger into the menu, and Erwin had to admit that it did look quite nice, pastel green studded with dark chocolate swirls and chips and topped with a veritable mountain of whipped cream.

The waitress came back with his order and two long-handled silver spoons, placing them neatly on the table while all but gawping at Levi. “Where did you get your tattoos done?” she asked, finally, pointing to the corners of her mouth to indicate the hinges that held Levi’s jaw together.

Before Erwin could hasten to explain, Levi was already responding. “I was manufactured in Silicon Valley,” he informed her. After a long, stilted pause and a sort of awkward chuckle, she left, shaking her head to herself, and Erwin began shoveling ice cream and chocolate into his mouth. Levi watched his human with a sense of pride and happiness, even when he got whipped cream all over his chin. He decided to himself that this was probably what sweetness was like, the smell of dairy products and whipped sugar, the laughter of children, and the sunlight gleaming through Erwin’s golden hair. Whirr, click.


	8. (눈.눈)♡~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *small edits by aelit

Weeks passed turned into months passed, and Erwin slowly but surely settled into rhythms of life in the big city. He was no longer fazed by the revolving doors at his workplace, though, admittedly, the one at the large combination Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s in the Richmond District had given him a run for his money, and he had learned that there was indeed a difference between an Americano and a cappuccino. Rico no longer poked too much fun at him, and with Levi’s assistance, Erwin had managed to keep abreast of current trends and fads.

Long gone were the days where Levi would all but have to forcibly drag Erwin back into the apartment by the strap of his overalls and force him to change into something more business appropriate, and Erwin had since then learned a thing or three about fashion, though, if he was being well and truly honest with himself, he was still tempted most mornings to tug on thick white socks like those he had worn in the corn fields to protect his ankles from all manner of little critters. Levi had, in a fit of desperation, tried to throw them out, tried to burn the lot, but they seemed to be colonial creatures, and he found them multiplying at every turn in the backmost recesses of Erwin’s sock drawer. He considered it a good day when he got Erwin to go out with nylon socks, and considered it a particularly blessed day when he got Erwin to match the colors of his socks and shoes.

And so, too, was Levi learning more than he’d ever – and his original programmer – had ever thought possible about humanity and the myriad interests and little quirks that define everyone’s individuality. With Erwin’s insistence that the housekeeping android take breaks from cleaning every now and again, Levi had been tapping into the upstairs neighbor’s unprotected wireless network and acquainting himself with the vast networks of human culture that sprawled out in all directions.

Though, admittedly, if one were to look the android squarely in the eye and ask him exactly what he had been doing on the Internet, he would make a noncommittal answer about examining human anatomy and would shuffle off as quickly as possible to dust a shelf that had already been dusted five times in the past hour.

He got himself up to date on current events in the news, and faithfully delivered them to Erwin in a delightfully resonant monotone that he had picked up from watching one too many Harry Potter movies online (he particularly liked Alan Rickman’s character). As such, Levi no longer had altercations with the neighbors’ teacup Yorkie over the rights to the newspaper, some of which had escalated into low key violence; Levi’s right arm panel still had vicious teeth marks in the silicone and plastic. Erwin had asked him if he’d like to go to a repair shop to see about fixing that, and Levi had eyed him beadily and brayed, “Nay, ‘tis but a flesh wound.”

Erwin had not understood the reference, but took it to mean that Levi was quite content with it either way, and so let the issue be.

Erwin didn’t have much time during the week to take Levi out and about the town, something for which he apologized profusely and something for which Levi had instantly forgiven him. Even on his excursions out to explore the city with Erwin, he hadn’t seen many other androids tottering around with their owners, and despite Erwin’s reassurances that he looked perfectly normal and that nothing was out of place, Levi could tell that he stuck out like a sore thumb. The English language was full of such delightful idioms, and he had resolved to incorporate one into his ever-growing vocabulary at least once a day.

Sure, there were the androids in the shopping centers and little kiosk malls, tottering around behind their owners, their silicone and plastic arms laden down under the weight of several large shopping bags and parcels, but Erwin had never been one for shopping, and even when he did buy the occasional trinket to send home to his parents in Nebraska, he had never asked Levi to carry them for him. It was interesting, refreshing, certainly, and the other androids stared at Levi with blank expressions that Levi was sure would be rife with jealousy if their programming had allowed room for those types of developments.

Alas, these androids had been mass produced and mass programmed, and were as such incapable of learning and emotional mimicry that Levi was starting to be quite adept at. Almost frighteningly so, Erwin thought to himself one evening when he came back and found Levi all but thrumming with excitement by the doorway, anticipating his arrival and hurrying to help him take off his coat and set his briefcase on the coffee table. He had, admittedly, been watching a lot of ‘50s soaps. Erwin had been quite bemused at the overload of affection from his dainty housekeeping android, but had chalked the low purring noise emitting from Levi up to his control modulus running particularly high or something of the sort. Computers and technology still had a way of baffling him, and despite his best efforts, he could still neither make heads nor tails of the way Mike and the other lawyers in the office managed to get numbers to multiply in their Xcel spreadsheets.

He could barely figure out how Rico got that card game to pop up on her screen, the one that she played incessantly day in and day out when she thought no one was watching. (Solitaire, Levi could have informed him. He was practically a grand master at it.)

Erwin, too, had relaxed his boundaries around the housekeeping android, and now that the weather was starting to turn slightly warmer, Erwin started to crack open the tiny window and equally tiny door to his bathroom while he took showers to let the steam out and to prevent mildew growth, as Levi had sagely advised him. Levi often plopped himself on the toilet lid and chatted to Erwin about his day, even going so far as to hand him his towel when Erwin flailed a hand out from behind the opaque plastic shower curtain for it. It was more immodest than Erwin had been in a long time, with anyone, really, but somehow, Levi’s almost clinical stare and interesting questions relaxed him after a long day of entering files and skimming contracts like no other.

Rico had even teased him about it.

“So, who’s this little lady you go home to see every night instead of going out with us, hmm?” she’d asked just that past Monday. Erwin had been tempted to cut a witty, waspy retort that Monday was a school night, and he couldn’t go out and play.

He’d settled for a nice, casual shrug instead. “Don’t have one.”

“Oh?” Her eyebrows had arched in surprise, and she’d even looked up from her vigorous game of Solitaire. The past weekend, her eyebrows had been plucked something fierce, and as a result, she looked like a particularly surprised Vulcan. Levi would have appreciated that reference. “What’s so interesting about just home, then?”

“My housekeeper,” Erwin had informed her, truthfully, and had breezed out of the office, leaving her to puzzle over this recent development. She eventually came to the conclusion that Erwin was a) hiding a relationship with his cleaning lady, b) some member of a moderately illicit gang, or c) just a homebody who had a penchant for throwing off his pants the first instant he stepped inside his domicile. She eventually settled on A. She, too, had been going through a series of ‘50s soap operas lately.

This particular day, Levi greeted him by the doorway, but not in a way that Erwin had exactly been expecting. Opening his door into the apartment, Erwin got all but smacked in the forehead with an extendable tape measure, and he gasped in sharp pain as the pointed metal edge caught him on the temple.

“What in the hell are you doing?” he asked Levi, who, to his credit, looked somewhat ashamed. He pressed a hand to his temple, wincing as it stung, and drew back his fingers to find them smeared with red. This, more than Erwin’s uncalled-for usage of h-e-double hockey sticks, had Levi gasping and dragging him to the bathroom to examine the full extent of the damage.

“My apologies,” Levi all but blubbered, eyebrows furrowing in concern and mouth hinges flapping a mile a minute in his obvious distress. He wet a wad of paper towels under the sink and pressed it to Erwin’s forehead. There was quite a lot of blood, and the compress turned pink quickly. “It is a head wound, you will be okay,” Levi assured him, despite the abject note of fear in his voice that was far from reassuring.

“I know, I know,” Erwin replied, waving off the android’s frantic attempts at assistance. “My pa got caught on the head once in the garden. Ran into a scarecrow or something. Bled like a stuck pig, but he’s none the worse for it.”

He finally managed Levi to calm down, got the android to perch on the ceramic ledge of the bathtub while Erwin applied pressure to the cut, which, upon closer inspection, was much shallower than he’d previously thought. It wouldn’t need stitches, and most likely wouldn’t scar, either. Slap a Band-Aid on it and he’d be right as rain, probably.

“Now, then,” he said, after he’d pasted a bandage over it. “Would you care to tell me exactly what you were doing with that tape measure?”

Levi considered the question for a moment, tilting his head to the side like he had seen many actors do in the movies. Unfortunately, he did it just a fraction of an angle too much, and as a result, looked like a particularly bemused barn owl. Not that Erwin would tell him.

“I was extrapolating measurements of the door in the James Cameron film Titanic,” Levi informed Erwin finally. “I have concluded that it is implausible that Rose could not rescue Jack. I took the liberty of using approximate measurements of our corporeal forms as representatives.”

“I have never seen that movie,” Erwin admitted, and Levi gawped at him like he had committed a crime. It had been on a list of one of the top movies of all time, and though he’d previously known Erwin was relatively uncultured in comparison with other men in their late twenties, he had not realized the full extent of his ignorance.

“We will watch it,” Levi informed him. “I have the film stored on my hard drive.”

* * *

 

The movie turned Erwin into a sobbing wreck, and the pile of crumpled tissues on the coffee table grew into a mountain as he continued to blow his nose like a particularly excitable foghorn.

Erwin was quite a study in human emotion, Levi thought to himself over the dulcet tones of Celine Dion, punctuated with Erwin’s loud snuffles. He had never seen a human male in his late twenties cry quite so much.

“Would you like me to hold you?” he asked, mechanically, a comfort response he had learned from watching one too many rom coms. Much to his surprise, Erwin nodded, and Levi patted him awkwardly on the back as Erwin sobbed through the rest of the movie.

Humans were truly fascinating creatures, he thought to himself, but he, too, could not deny the little humming that started up within his control modulus every time Erwin smiled at him. Perhaps this was what it might be like to be in love.

* * *

 

Had Levi also been keeping abreast of the news feeding out about the SONY Housekeeper 228 series, he would have been informed that the particular coding installed in the defective models was also prone to making the androids more excitable, to pushing their fans and control moduli to higher levels of activity. It was warned that anyone still in possession of a Housekeeper 228 model would most likely have to purchase a new, later edition Housekeeper within 2 years because of the wear and tear on the 228’s processor*, and by that time, SONY was no longer obligated to cover the warranty cost of free replacement if damaged.

But the small article in the newspapers was utterly overlooked as Levi pondered the new revolutionary changes he found himself undergoing, and neither he nor Erwin was the wiser.


	9. ʚ♡⃛ɞ(눈ᴗ눈❁)

It was a brilliant summer’s day in the middle of June when Erwin decided to take Levi to the Exploratorium. He had read several reviews for the science and technology museum on his work computer, thinking it might be something Levi might like to do. Unfortunately, Mike had passed behind his desk to deposit the last bitter dregs of his morning’s sludge into the potted ficus that Erwin had moved over farther to his side of the office to try and prevent just such a thing from happening; the plant was looking rather dejected, despite his best efforts to try and revive it, and was a sickening shade of yellow that could probably have featured in a medical encyclopedia under the condition ‘jaundice.’ Mike ignored this blatant attempt at plant defense, and instead preferred to push away from his desk and walk clear across the office to deposit his coffee into the soil like he had been doing for the past who knew how long.

As a result, he passed behind Erwin’s desk rather frequently, and, unfortunately for Erwin, he was not yet technologically savvy enough to know that one could easily hide desktop windows with a quick click of the minimize button or a quick switch to another tab. He had been caught red-handed, and only looked up at Mike with a guilty sort of smile as he silently pleaded with the other man not to report this blatant misuse of company time to the higher-ups.

Mike eyed the museum’s website with the reviews with intense scrutiny, bristling his mustache from side to side as his gaze flicked from the monitor to Erwin and back again. After a long pause during which Erwin was sure he’d aged no less than ten years, Mike simply sniffed, smiled, and clapped him on the back. “Finally, you’re one of us now,” he proclaimed, grandly announcing that their takeout curry would be on him today. (Secretly, he billed it back to Sonoma and Sons as corporate expense, but Erwin was none the wiser, and instead spent their lunch hour beaming like the fond idiot he was about finally having broken into the office camaraderie of slackers.)

“You thinking about going to the Exploratorium, then?” Mike asked through a mouthful of chicken. Erwin nodded eagerly, and took a large gulp or three of water. He was sure he’d ordered a mild chicken curry, but perhaps Mike had misheard or there had been some miscommunication between their office telephone and whoever had picked up the phone at the curry shop, because this was definitely not mild. “Just for fun, or you bringing someone with you?”

Mike slated his question innocently enough, and Erwin suspected nothing in the other’s casual tone. He gnawed on another forkful of chicken, panting through his mouth and trying to get some air on his much-abused tongue and taste buds. “I’m bringing someone with me,” he replied after he’d gotten his breath back, placing the Styrofoam take-out box on his desk and standing up to refill his cup of water from the cooler for the fifth time. “I’ll be right back.”

Mike watched him with amusement as Erwin traipsed across the office, waving and smiling to all of the other lawyers, paralegals, and interns. Erwin could certainly charm the pants off a snake, he always had a kind word and a little pick-me-up for everyone, and a simple journey over to the water cooler took about fifteen minutes on average. Plenty of time.

Mike whipped out his phone and pulled up his conversation with Rico seventeen floors down.

“Confirmed. He’s going to the Exploratorium with someone.”

A grey ellipsis appeared, disappeared, appeared again. Mike took another bite of curry. The ellipsis was still on the screen, and he wondered what could possibly be holding Rico up. She normally texted back at the speed of light, a true miracle when one considered the length of her acrylic nails. It was a wonder she could get her fingertips to make contact with the touch screen at all.

Perhaps she was playing through a particularly exciting game of Solitaire, Mike thought to himself, taking another glance over to where Erwin was now chatting with a particularly bored-looking intern. Probably something about his corn-fed childhood in Nebraska. Erwin was always eager to jaw about that, at any time of any day, and Mike had long ago learned to tune it out. The poor intern, however, had no such aptitude for that sort of thing, and with his eagerness to become the next great lawyer prosecuting cases like Brown vs. Board of Education and Roe vs. Wade, had his turquoise eyes narrowed, his tongue sticking out just the faintest bit as he tried hard to dedicate all of Erwin’s spiel to memory in the hopes that maybe a bit of Erwin’s relative glory as associate lawyer would rub off on him. He looked just this shy of taking notes, and Mike snorted with laughter as Erwin’s deep baritone carried across the office as he really got into the swing of things – ah, yes, he’d gotten to the tractor and the six piglets story – and Mike watched as Erwin gestured wildly, slopping water all over the intern’s desk in his excitement.

He turned his eyes back to the screen. Rico had sent him a frighteningly long text message, one that could probably have won the Pulitzer if submitted to a review committee skilled in analyzing subtext through several emojis and unnecessary punctuation marks.

“Oh! My! God!!!! ;) ;) ;) u know what this means don’t u?!!!!! Erwin’s got a lil amour that he’s been keeping a secret from us this whole time!!! Who do u think it is? :o maybe it’s that girl in HR who always buys an extra bagel and wears the bright polka dot scarves” (Rico, just now)

Mike was relatively sure that whoever Erwin was bringing with him to the Exploratorium was not that particular girl in HR. She’d made passes at Erwin, sure, most of the female employees had by this time, but Erwin somehow managed to deflect all of their attempts with ease made all the more charming by his utter obliviousness. No. Whoever he was taking was someone else, someone who probably didn’t work at the company.

But the Exploratorium? That was an interesting choice for a date, seeing as how it was more of a museum for families than anything else…

The thought lingered in Mike’s mind, solidifying as he listened to Erwin pull the most classic dad joke of all time – ‘Hi Thirsty, I’m Erwin!’ – as he reached for his phone again.

“Maybe it’s his kid,” he texted back. “It’s the Exploratorium, not the Louvre or smth, idk”

He clicked off his phone and stashed it back into his slacks pocket as Erwin sat back to his curry with his new cup of water and began spooning in more of the chicken and rice with gusto, mopping at his forehead and watering eyes with a Kleenex every two bites. The phone vibrated urgently in his pocket as Rico bombarded him with texts, the content of which he could only begin to imagine, but instead of checking it, he just smiled politely across the office desk and informed Erwin that he could buy tickets to the museum online.

This revelation was greeted with a gasp of amazement, and Erwin was so excited that he knocked over his cup of water and had to go back in another fifteen-minute sojourn to get more.

* * *

 

Levi gaped in awe, his mouth hinges at full extension as Erwin took him by the hand and led him up to the leaf-strewn walkway to the large dome that housed the Exploratorium. He had read reviews of the place as well, had looked through the pictures with something frighteningly close to longing, and clearly Erwin must have been getting much more subtle about going through Levi’s browsing history than the bull in a china shop that he’d once been, because how else would he know that Levi might have liked to go here?

It was truly astounding, almost too much for Levi’s sensory inputs to handle as he drank in the sight. Children ran amok through the exhibits, laughing and flipping through the interactive displays. The entrance hall boasted a gift shop, a Jacob’s ladder with blue electricity sparking up to the top, a giant globe that, when spun, would change colors. Levi was delighted beyond measure, and, much like a hyperactive child after ingesting three ice cream cones, flitted from exhibit to exhibit with glee, eager to get his hands on everything while Erwin followed him around with a dopey, loving smile, clicking pictures of his housekeeper android at all the activities. His camera roll filled up with pictures of Levi: making a bridge out of index cards to support a bank of pennies, drawing Moire patterns with careful concentration to the awe of a group of children huddled around him to the exasperated amusement of their mothers, up to his elbows in bubble mix as he shook a large wire hoop in the soapy suds and then pulling it out to fling huge iridescent bubbles into the air.

The last activity in particular looked quite fun, without any of the technical and scientific stuff that filled the little plaques by each exhibit, and Erwin clicked the camera off before going to join Levi. The handles of the wire triangle a five year old had so graciously relinquished to him were tiny, slippery through his fingers, and kept falling back into the bubble mix.

Levi reached out, his silicone and plastic digits smooth against Erwin’s skin as he helped wrap both their fingers around the handles. The bubbles they made together were massive, floating up to the faux-dinosaur skeleton dangling above them before popping on its ribs. Levi’s laughter was music to his ears.

* * *

 

That night, Erwin, utterly exhausted from their adventures, all but flopped into bed, nearly asleep the instant his head hit the pillow.

He stirred briefly when he felt the mattress shift beneath him. He turned his head, tired, to watch as Levi flopped down in bed beside him.

“Wha’s wrong?” he mumbled, his body automatically moving to reach up and tuck the blankets around Levi’s shoulders. Muscle memory, really; an old border collie he’d christened Buddy back in the fourth grade had had a habit of flinging himself onto Erwin’s bed even though his ma had strictly forbidden him from going upstairs. His warm belly and wagging tail had helped Erwin through many a freezing winter. “You cold?”

He was shocked into half-wakefulness by the feeling of cool plastic against his cheek. Straining to focus, he found himself eye to eye with Levi, who had dimmed the green night glow especially for him.

“I am kissing you,” Levi informed him, his mechanical syllables holding just the faintest tinge of hope. It would have been much more effective had he been manufactured with lips, but Erwin was charmed by the gesture anyway. “I have been informed that it is a gesture of thanks and affection. I had fun.”

“Oh, good, I’m glad,” Erwin replied with a smile. He didn’t have too much experience with kissing, himself, but the elegant ladies and sirs in all those English dramas his mother liked to watch kissed each other on the cheeks and mouths as greetings, as thanks, as goodbyes, so surely there was something to be said for it. He pecked Levi where his lips might be, fondly, affectionately, and fell asleep to the comforting whirr and hum of Levi’s ventilation fans.


	10. ♡〜٩(눈▿눈)۶〜♡

As Erwin’s first yearly review at the office approached, he took Mike’s advice and tried to be as studious as possible, working like a fiend and trying to get as many cases researched and signed off on as possible. He started spending later and later hours at the office in an attempt to show his absentminded boss how good of a job he was doing, how hard of a worker he was, and though Mike and Rico snickered about it when they shared a taxi cab home, there was no denying that Erwin would get the fruits of his labors in the form of a raise.

If one were to ask Erwin’s boss, a well-meaning but jaded and exhausted man by the name of Darius Zackley, off the record, he would tell you that he had given Erwin the raise because he desperately wished Erwin would start jawing about what fancy nightclub he’d been to the previous weekend instead of spending hours soliloquizing on the growing stages of corn and various other grain crops. He figured that Erwin’s lack of activity in the San Francisco social stage was due to a lack of spending money, something that he could certainly understand. San Francisco wasn’t a cheap place to live, after all, and if the rumors about Erwin having a special significant other tucked away somewhere were anything to go by, then the rent combined with the financial expense of keeping a relationship afloat certainly couldn’t be easy. Zackley lived vicariously through his younger employees, but Erwin was really killing the mood in the office what with all his odd fascination with a pair of jeans and his farm jargon that he was willing to spout volumes about if just given the chance.

But, on the books, Zackley was adamant in insisting that Erwin was a fantastic employee, and the recent volume of work he had been putting through was certainly an indication of his growing potential to perhaps become a partner in the firm one day. Granted, he wasn’t part of the Sonoma family, and was also not a friend of the family, but Zackley privately thought that Erwin had more enterprise in his little finger than the three Sonoma partners currently on the board of directors had in their whole bodies. They were hardly ever in town, preferring to spend their free time jetting off around the world in private planes, and usually only stumbled in, skin darkly toasted and suffering a crop of stubble and alcoholic fumes strong enough to fell a bull elephant, at their aging father’s behest. Zackley figured that, when it came time for him to step down, he would put in a good word or two for Erwin, see if he couldn’t pull some strings with the old man himself. Maybe over a round of golf and several rounds of whiskey. That would be the ticket.

In fact, Erwin was so busy that he came home later and later, his jawline already sporting a dark golden crop of stubble, dropping his briefcase by the couch before collapsing onto the cushions. It was cause for concern for Levi, who was meticulously making his way through the Documentary and Gay and Lesbian sections on Netflix. He’d seen enough soaps and dramas on patisserie competitions to panic. (Their upstairs neighbor, too, was panicking; he had no idea how to explain to his girlfriend why exactly Brokeback Mountain was in his list of recommendations, as well as in his history.)

“Do you have a work wife?” Levi asked plainly, sitting Erwin down after a particularly hellish Friday when Erwin staggered through the apartment door. Erwin had pink smeared all over his collar, which Levi’s ocular sensors zoomed in on, and Erwin was taken aback when he responded and Levi’s eyes were all but bugging out of his head.

“Er, please don’t do that,” he said, gently reaching forward to nudge Levi’s eyes back into his head. “It looks a bit odd.” Noticing the direction of Levi’s furious stare, Erwin glanced down at his collar. “Oh, gosh, sorry about that,” he said, frowning fretfully and rubbing at the stain. “I guess I must have spilled a bit of my strawberry and cream drink from Starbucks.”

Levi grimaced. Erwin hadn’t answered the question, and so he repeated it. It didn’t help that the coffee company did happen to have a strawberries and cream drink on their menu, and it certainly didn’t help that he knew for a fact Erwin adored sweet, sugary, brightly colored drinks though Levi had warned him multiple times that they would do horrible things to his blood sugar and his longevity as a whole, but the whole thing just seemed too convenient. And, of course, Levi had been watching one too many soaps.

“Do you have a work wife?” he asked again, looking Erwin dead on.

Erwin appeared genuinely confused. “A what now?” he asked, frowning. “I’m not married. You know that.”

“Do you love her?” Levi pressed on with this line of inquiry, refusing to let up, much like a small territorial dog with a particularly meaty bone.

“Do I love who?” Erwin asked, exasperated. “I don’t love anyone at work. I just…” He trailed off, frowning into the distance for a moment, and Levi waited for his human to say something deep and profound. “I just love you,” he finished, finally, looking up at Levi from under lowered lids as though ashamed. “It’s a bit weird, isn’t it?” he said, laughing uneasily when Levi didn’t say anything. “A human falling in love with an android. It’s like those Facebook posts that Rico always shows me about conversations people have with Siri –“

He was saved from his incessant babbling, the type he did whenever he got nervous, by Levi hurling himself at him in a lightweight tangle of limbs, tackling him onto the couch with several rapid whirrs of delight. He loved him, he really, truly did! It was as Levi had expected, the line he’d been waiting for seemingly ever since he’d been assembled and booted up, as though it had been programmed into him to want and need and love in all the ways a human could.

“Oh, I love you, too,” he swooned, in a monotone repetition from a dramatic Korean housewife he’d seen earlier that day.

“What?” Erwin asked, confused. “I didn’t understand that.”

“Oh, I love you, too,” Levi repeated, in English this time, his installed translator pack not having caught up beforehand. Erwin grinned and ruffled his hand through Levi’s hair before leaning forward to feather a kiss against the smooth plane of Levi’s cheekbone.

* * *

 

However, despite these joyous revelations and Levi’s current attempts to assimilate himself into housewife culture (see: freshly squeezed orange juice at breakfast, good; trying to steal the neighbors’ cat because Erwin had once expressed a fondness for animals, bad), Erwin was at work so frequently that he didn’t notice Levi had started to slowly, but surely, wind down. He was no longer as precise as he once had been, was no longer as quick to bound across the room and reach for a broomstick to bang the ceiling with whenever their upstairs neighbors decided to have relations on a relatively peaceful Sunday morning. Though Erwin had asked Levi to wake him up at six-thirty, there were days when he would be woken up, glance at the clock, and see that it was already six forty-five.

Erwin shrugged it off. After all, what was fifteen minutes in the grand scheme of things? Not much, if he was being honest. He was busy at work, excited to earn the bonus Boss Zackley had been heavily hinting at for the better part of the last quarter, and he let it go. Surely it was nothing a quick power-on, power-off couldn’t fix.


	11. (っ눈 ‸ 눈 ς)"

But even Erwin, busy as he was, could no longer deny the fact that something was slowly but surely not operating at full capacity. Boss Zackley had given him the raise and end of the year bonus; he’d all but had to force Erwin out the door the last day of the work year, with a swat to his shoulder with last Sunday’s newspaper and a warning (completely serious) that if he saw Erwin before the New Year’s, he’d have a conniption. Erwin had laughed bashfully, accepting the bonus check Zackley had slid onto his desk in between the moldering boxes of take-out, and had assured him that he would try not to come in between the dates of December 24th and January 1st, though Zackley was quite sure that the dawn of January 2nd would see Erwin already at his desk and booting up his computer.

The kid was just too damn cheery for his own good, and surely the girlfriend (or boyfriend, Zackley wasn’t one to judge), couldn’t be happy about the long hours Erwin had been pulling recently. Or perhaps Erwin would use the small vacation to journey to a tropical island, see his family in the Midwest again. Either way, Zackley wished him a happy holiday season and hightailed it out of the office before Erwin could invite him on whatever shenanigans he was planning to do during the two-week hiatus.

Erwin came home that Friday with a cheery jaunt in his step, dropped his briefcase smartly by the door, and yodeled his afternoon greeting to Levi. Levi didn’t reply.

This in itself wasn’t much cause for concern; the android did love listening to music of all genres, with a particular fondness on something he called EDM, and occasionally he wouldn’t hear Erwin, plugged in as he was to the soundwaves. Erwin hummed to himself as he wandered through his small domicile, looking for Levi.

He found him in the bedroom, curled up in the middle of the mattress, the blankets thrown over him. His eyes were closed, and he lay so still that Erwin almost reached out to check to see if he was still alive before he remembered that Levi wasn’t.

“Um…” He paused, considering his options. “Psst! Levi!” he hissed, not wanting to reach out and shake the android awake. Did androids sleep? He wondered to himself. He certainly hadn’t read anything to indicate it in the instructions manual, though if he was being fair, Erwin hadn’t read the instructions manual past the point where it told him how to assemble the android and turn him on. Levi hadn’t slept in the year and few months he’d had him, but then again, perhaps he slept during the day after he’d scrubbed the last corners of the apartment?

“Levi!” He tried again. He thought Levi twitched, but there was no other discernible response. Erwin frowned in consternation; he’d had plans for this afternoon with Levi. “If you wake up, I’ll take you to the shore and we can throw French fries at the seagulls like last time!” he offered generously; the last time they’d done so, Levi had all but collapsed with mirth when the misdirected birds had mistakenly attacked a man with an ice cream cone instead of fighting each other over the sticks of fried potato.

That got Levi to stir, and Erwin grinned triumphantly. Levi whirred and clicked, his eyelids flickering until they fluttered open and his black eyes focused in on Erwin. “You are home early,” Levi intoned faintly, pushing himself up and eyeing Erwin beadily. “I have not yet cleaned.”

“We had a half-day today,” Erwin said, smiling gleefully as he leaned forward to press a kiss to Levi’s forehead. “Being the holiday season and all. I thought I told you yesterday?”

“This device does not have enough storage for all your comments,” Levi said, frowning down at himself a bit regretfully. “You would need to purchase more memory.”

“Oh, never mind that,” Erwin said breezily, helping Levi out of bed. The android seemed rather sluggish today, half a second late to react to things and respond to Erwin’s conversation. “I’m here now. Do you want to do anything fun? I’m off for the next two weeks.”

“Two weeks?” Levi goggled at him. “I am informed that most humans, when presented with a small vacation, enjoy traveling the world or returning to see their family. Which one shall it be?”

“Hmm…” Erwin rubbed his chin in thought. “I would like to see Ma and Pa again,” he conceded. “But I thought maybe we could spend a few days together? I know we haven’t seen much of each other as of late?”

“That will be excellent,” Levi agreed. “Would user like me to book him a flight home?”

Erwin’s brows furrowed; Levi hadn’t referred to him in the third neutral person since the very first week they’d been together, and such a reversion was, well, concerning.

“I would like to book a flight home,” Erwin said, cautiously, surreptitiously prodding at Levi’s forehead as though searching for a temperature. His hand dropped quickly back to his side, realizing how silly it was. “Book yourself a seat, too! I’d love for you to meet my parents.”

Levi eyed him carefully. “I will be perfectly happy to be disassembled and put back into my storage box for the duration of the flight. Storing and tagging a piece of luggage, if you must, is vastly cheaper than purchasing an additional seat on a flight that will be crowded and already expensive with holiday rates.”

Erwin gasped at the idea, the indignity of it. “No,” he protested lamely, pulling out the envelope from Zackley that he’d stuffed into the pocket of his overcoat in the elevator ride down from the law offices. “I just got a bonus, see? The price is not a problem.”

“I have no desire to be searched by the relevant authorities,” Levi droned. “I have heard the TSA is quite ruthless, and I have several sensitive internal components.”

“Oh.” Erwin frowned. “I suppose that would be a problem, yes.”

A silence stretched out between them. Levi’s fans whirred, and something inside him clicked at a frightening pace. Erwin was quite sure he’d never heard that sound before, but Levi’s face had fallen blank again, staring at the wall over Erwin’s shoulder. Erwin just barely resisted the urge to wave his hand in front of the android’s face to test for a reaction.

“So…” he murmured, after a long pause of nothingness during which he listened to the hot dog vendor on the corner hawk his wares in a rasping Brooklyn accent, “have you found any tickets?”

There was no response. Upon closer inspection, Levi was quite warm. Far too warm. This had never happened before, and Erwin began to panic. What did Mike do whenever his computer froze up? He tried to think, his thoughts racing a mile a minute as he sprinted through his admittedly not quite vast lexicon of technological how-to.

Ah! Reset. That was what Mike did. He’d thump the top of the CPU under his desk, frown and bristle his mustache at the screen, and then would hold down the power button until the monitor went black. He would then count to ten before turning it on again, and then would turn to Erwin with a grimace and say, “Fucking first-gen computers.”

Erwin thought that he could skip the thumping part, and slowly, carefully, he frowned and bristled at Levi as he slowly pushed up the fabric of the old shirt Levi was wearing. He popped open the control panel on Levi’s chest carefully, peering into the dark cavity to where the power button was gleaming a soft blue.

“Just hold on a bit,” he whispered to Levi, though he was quite sure Levi’s processes were currently stuck in some airline’s hard-to-navigate website. “I’m gonna reset you. I promise it won’t hurt.” Erwin immediately felt silly for making the promise, but it seemed too cold to just shut Levi off without any warning.

He took a deep breath and held down the button.

Slowly, Levi’s fans whirred to a stop, the gleam left his dark glossy eyes, and the power button went dim beneath his fingertip. Erwin felt like crying as he counted to ten with shaky breaths.

He could hardly wait to press the button again, and when it lit up beneath the pad of his thumb and Levi gently began to whirr and click to life again, Erwin breathed a sigh of relief. The gleam came back into Levi’s dark eyes, and he blinked up at Erwin in surprise.

“You seem distressed,” he informed Erwin in a monotone. “Perhaps your diet contains too much sodium.”

Erwin choked back a teary laugh. There was the Levi he knew and loved! He patted kisses all over Levi’s face in gratitude, and nothing could dull his happiness for the rest of the night, not even when Levi informed him three hours later that because he had waited so long to purchase his airline tickets, there were no seats to be found on any flights to Nebraska. The last seat had sold out three and a half hours ago, and Erwin had ruffled his hand through Levi’s hair and had told him he would just FaceTime his parents instead.

Surely they would understand.


	12. ( ˘ ³˘)♡(･ิω･ิ)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! Also I'm hyperaware that I'm taking vast liberties with the technological aspect of things but......just read it...I guess..

Despite Levi’s resetting, it became quickly apparent that something was quite wrong. Levi was no longer as quick on his toes as he once had been, it took him longer to stream movies from Netflix and HBO, which he had insisted Erwin purchase after discovering it was the only channel that would show Game of Thrones, and his internal clock kept falling off track by precisely thirty-four minutes one way or the other. Levi seemed to be full of ennui and a general overwhelming sense of malaise, and not even the appearance of the neighbors’ Siamese cat on their fire escape could rouse him to action. It was rather problematic, and if Levi had been a human, Erwin would have suggested that perhaps they go to the doctor.

As Levi was not a human, Erwin suggested that they go to the Genius Bar. It sounded quite reputable, with several scattered throughout the city, and had been given an A-plus by Rico.

Unfortunately, what Erwin did not know was that the Genius Bars were only equipped to handle reparations and problems associated with Apple merchandise.

He dragged Levi to the store one drizzly morning in late December, and had to all but fight his way through the crush of people trying to buy last minute Christmas presents. Employees in royal blue shirts and neatly pressed khakis milled throughout the store, and children of all ages played on the various devices on display.

“How can I help you, sir?” A cheery young sprite of a girl, with freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose and a veritable explosion of honey colored hair, came up to him and Levi with an iPad in hand, ready to add up the total of whatever Erwin was purchasing. She smiled grandly at Levi, who stared blankly at her.

“I’m trying to get him – er, I mean, my housekeeper android – repaired.” Erwin indicated Levi, who was now grimacing at a child at the other end of the store. The child burst into tears. “He’s been freezing up a lot lately.”

“Hmm…” The employee, whose nametag indicated her as Petra R., frowned at Levi, examining him closely. “He doesn’t appear to be one of our models, sir,” she said apologetically, “but it probably wouldn’t hurt to have the guys over there take a look at him.” She waved to the end of the store, where a line of blue-and-khaki-clothed employees sat waiting patiently behind a wooden bar. “They know a fair bit about computers and might be able to help you out.”

A small Roomba zipped through the store, picking up dust and lint and shed hairs. It bumped against Levi’s foot, and Levi glared down, hissing at the automated vacuum. Much to the surprise of everyone involved, the Roomba hissed back before turning a cool ninety degrees and zipping off in another direction.

“Right,” Erwin said, trying to play it off casually. Petra looked absolutely shell-shocked. “Well, I’ll just go and have them give Levi – um, my housekeeper android – a look see then.” Grabbing Levi by the wrist, he pushed them through the crowd of shoppers towards the bar.

Once at the bar, an employee by the name of Auruo B. waved him over to where he was seated. “What seems to be the problem?” he drawled in a nasally tone, clearly unaffected by the way Levi was glaring at him. His eyes flickered over Levi, apparently uninterested, and then flicked back just as quickly, seeming to bug out of his head.

“Oh my God,” he hissed, excitedly, “is that a SONY –“ The rest of his sentence was cut off; he had just bitten his tongue quite badly. Erwin winced in sympathy.

“Id that a SODY Houdekeeber 228?” Auruo finished, his voice clogged.

“It is,” Erwin replied cautiously, a glimmer of hope in his heart. Even though the Genius Bar purportedly only serviced Apple products, perhaps this young fellow might have the answer to Levi’s problems! “He’s been freezing up a lot lately, running slower, stuff like that, and I was hoping maybe you’d know how to fix him? Or maybe if you know someone who does…?”

Auruo shook his head with a small frown. “Dat model wuh recalled a log tibe ago,” he said. “Problems wid da battery life ad programs.”

Erwin could only agree with that. He’d noticed Levi needed to spend longer and longer times in hibernate or standby, recharging whilst plugged in to the wall, and could only stay awake for a mere few hours. Long gone were the days where Levi insisted on marathoning House of Cards for two days straight. The battery life clearly was an issue.

“I dink you should turn hib in,” Auruo proclaimed. His tongue was apparently quite swollen, but from how the other employees were acting about it, it was a common occurrence. “Get anodder, newer model.”

“I can’t,” Erwin protested. “I like this one. And I think my warranty is expired, anyway.” This was a blatant lie; he had no idea whether he had a warranty or not, and if he did have one, he was quite sure it was probably buried in the hallway closet where he discarded things that might be important, but not important enough to hold his interest at the immediate time.

Auruo rolled his eyes. “SODY doesn’t make da batteries for 228 adymore,” he said, spelling out certain doom. “Thorry.”

With a discouraged heart, Erwin led Levi out of the shop, assuring Levi every step of the walk home that he loved him and nothing, not even a faulty battery or bugged programs, could deter his affections. Levi returned his sentiment cheerily. The whole outing had been a colossal waste of time, and as he let Levi plug himself back into the outlet by the nightstand again, he sighed sadly, looking at his little crumpled heap of an android and wondering what he was to do.

* * *

 

As it turned out, Erwin didn’t have to do anything. Upon waking the next morning, he found Levi still in the same crumpled heap by the nightstand. Concern flooded over him immediately; the android usually unplugged himself during the night to crawl over into Erwin’s bed.

Upon getting to his knees in front of the android, Erwin found that Levi’s plastic skin was cold to the touch, and all his battery indicators were dead. Nothing was glowing, not even the little pinpricks of light in his eyes, and despite trying to restart him, plug him in and out again, and Google the problem at hand, all signs led to the fact that Levi had well and truly kicked the bucket. The website Erwin had pulled up on his phone suggested that he take Levi to the nearest electronics store to trade him in for a newer model, just as Auruo had said he should do yesterday.

Erwin couldn’t help it. He wept.

* * *

 

Four days later saw him at a Best Buy three miles away from his apartment, his eyes and nose red from crying. There was a hiccup in his voice as he placed Levi gently down onto the glass countertop, laying him out carefully and placing his head down nicely. The associates vaguely wondered if they should call security to help escort the clearly distraught and perhaps mentally unstable man out of the building.

“Good-bye, Levi,” Erwin whispered, and that phrase had him bursting out into tears again. One of the braver retail workers tiptoed up to him, handed him a Kleenex from her pocket, which he took with a nod of gratitude before proceeding to honk viciously into it. “You were a beautiful, lovely android. The very best.”

“Sir?” the associate said gently. “We can eject your android’s hard drive and memory cartridges if you’d like. Maybe put it into a Roomba. That’ll take care of your vacuuming needs for a while with a more…personal touch.”

Erwin sniffled, weepy, and nodded. He couldn’t bring himself to look as Levi was carted away. (At least, that’s how it was in his edited version of events. In truth, the retail associate had to ask him several times to please let go of the returns cart, and he made the Channel 4 News.)

With a bit of tinkering, and several more Kleenexes, Erwin left the store, rubbing his eyes on his shirt sleeves. His new personalized Roomba, which the retail associate had given him at a heavy discount out of pity, hung in a bag that he carried around his wrist as he trudged his sorrowful way home.

* * *

 

The apartment, once seemingly so tiny, now felt downright massive without Levi. Erwin kept expecting his android to pop out from around the corner to bop him in the head with a ruler, or to sit him down at the dining table to place a plate of spinach, broiled chicken, and brown rice in front of him. But no, he had to keep reminding himself, Levi was gone, probably wheeled away for scrap metal or something equally horrific, and all that he had left of him was in the little vacuum that zipped merrily around the floor that he’d finally taken out of the box a month or so after returning from the electronics store. His apartment had started getting quite dusty, and potato chips littered the floor near his bedside which the Roomba was efficiently sweeping up.

It bumped him in the ankle now, rather fiercely.

“Ouch!” Erwin yelped, protesting as he glared at the little Roomba. “That hurt!”

The Roomba beeped up at him, its display lighting up a bright green, and it refused to budge. Erwin frowned, momentarily distracted from his grief. Weren’t these vacuums supposed to automatically turn and zoom off in another direction upon encountering an obstacle? It would be just his luck if two pieces of technology were to fail on him.

“Erwin,” the Roomba stated, in a jangled series of beeps. Erwin gaped at the Roomba. The Roomba stared back.

“L…Levi?” he whispered, eyes wide in disbelief. It couldn’t be. Could it?

“Your biomass has increased by at least 300%,” the Roomba quipped. “You have grown massive.”

With a cry of delight, Erwin dropped to his knees on the hardwood floor, ignoring the ache that darted up his legs. He reached down to pick up the little vacuum, its tiny wheels positively squealing in protest, and hugged it to his chest. “Oh, Levi,” he sobbed, smothering the vacuum’s white top and digital display with kisses. “I knew it was you! Oh, you have no idea how much I’ve missed you!”

“You’ve missed me?” the Roomba asked, beeping a little song that sounded positively infused with delight. “Really?”

“I really have,” Erwin crowed, hugging the Roomba tightly. “Oh, my sweetest Levi, I’ve been such a mess without you!”

“Yes, you have,” Levi Roomba quipped back. “You are consuming too many potato chips.”

Erwin’s laughter and the Roomba’s cheerful beeps resounded through the apartment, and a month later would see Erwin back at the electronics store, a Roomba following closely at his heels and a photograph of Levi’s Housekeeper 228 form, ready to detail Levi’s corporeal form back into existence.

He’d had to convince Levi to leave out the penis apparatus. Levi had been distraught and had bruised Erwin’s ankles for days until Erwin relented and told him that he could have a cuter nose this time.

* * *

 

“Okay, here goes.” Erwin took a deep breath. Levi sat patiently beside him, his Roomba display regarding his new form that Erwin had had custom-made. It had set Erwin back a pretty penny, but nothing was too good for Levi, Erwin was convinced. The panels of plastic skin melded together seamlessly; mouth hinges were gone completely from this model. The control panel on the chest area was all but invisible, and the eyes looked softer, framed with thick, dark eyelashes that Levi had selected from a Maybelline advertisement. A button nose graced the new model’s face, and a pair of plush, soft lips rounded it off, with a lovely human appearance that the 228 model had been severely lacking. “You ready?”

Levi beeped in agreement.

Erwin carefully popped open the Roomba’s control panel, reaching in to pluck out the hard drive and memory chips, which he then slotted into the requisite slots in the android’s chest. After a moment of breathless uncertainty, and a quick reach around to the nape of the android’s neck to flick the power switch, the robot began to power up with a series of soft, barely there whirrs.

Light came into the android’s dark, glossy eyes, peeking up at Erwin almost shyly through a fall of soft hair.

“Levi?” Erwin asked, hopefully, praying with all his might.

The android’s lips curled up into a smile, and Levi reached forward to wrap his arms around Erwin and tug him into a kiss.


End file.
